If youβre an SEO (or aspiring to be one) or a business owner with a website, you might have already come across terms like natural links, quality links, and good links.
It can be pretty confusing, right? Thatβs why learning about the links you have on your website is super important.
Letβs start off with some facts.
Backlinks do help you rank higher on Google! And they are one of Googleβs βtop 3 ranking factors.β However, not all links are good in the eyes of search engines; they have to be quality and ethical links for them to make a move on the search algorithm.
A natural link is one that occurs organically as a reference to a piece of content, website, or source (without paying for it).
- Does that mean there are natural links and unnatural or inorganic links?
- How do you differentiate the two, and whatβs the impact of using either of them on your SEO campaign?
In this article, you will learn more about:
- What is a natural link, and how does it help your SEO strategy?
- What is a natural link building strategy?
- An example of natural links?
- What are natural and unnatural links?
- Quality links?
- How do you define a good link?
- How you can get natural links?
Ready to learn? Letβs get started.
What are Natural and Unnatural Links?
Normally, in SEO, youβll get two types of links, natural and unnatural. Letβs break them down in this section.
What is a Natural Link?
A natural link is one that your website gets when other webmasters or bloggers use your content (infographics, videos, and blog posts) in theirs and link back to you as a reference or source.
So, instead of generating them yourself through guest posting or other link-building strategies, youβre getting a relevant link that you deserve rather than purchasing one.
In a nutshell, natural links do the following:
- Are in a natural context: The content surrounding the link is relevant to that on the target page.
- Provide value for the readers: They actually offer additional information about a certain topic.
- Have an anchor text: The text is integrated with the page contents in a meaningful way.
So, itβs actually a link you earn because people feel you have done good work on your website that is worth referring to. And when it gets to that level, then your SEO strategy can be said to be in its prime.
Therefore, investing your time and resources in earning natural links is not only ethical but is also good for business through traffic sent to your site, reputation, and authority.
In the end, if you have a low DA, it starts to rise the more you get natural links from other authoritative sites.
Thatβs how it works.
What is an example of a natural link?
In this section, weβll talk about some examples of natural links. They include:
- A natural, no-follow link to a website that was added to an article without the website owner's knowledge.
- A nofollow link to a website from a news article that uses data from the linked site as its source.
- A profile links SEO of genuine social media backlinks that are being shared by clients who like to link to the goods and services of their preferred brands.
- A natural link profile that is organically earned because the website has high-quality content.
- A backlink that comes from a third-party blog, website, or profile link building site list with a summary of the linked content while also giving the author credit.
- A citation link from a site like Wikipedia that attributes credit to the original work.
- Any natural backlink thatβs acquired organically without an agreement between sites.
How do Natural Links Help Your SEO Strategy?
Leveraging the power of natural links for your SEO can have huge benefits. They include:
- Increased Domain Authority
- Increased Page Authority for individual URLs.
- Improved organic rankings on Google and other search engines.
- More referral traffic comes from the linking sites, which leads to increased revenue, brand awareness, and search visibility for your business.
- Chances of faster indexing for linked content.
- Increased trust signals, such as better SEO keyword rankings, perceived credibility, and a larger online market share in the SERPs, lead to higher conversion rates.
- Continuous website promotion by other sites that send targeted traffic to your content.
What about unnatural links? Letβs talk more about them in the next section.
What are Unnatural Links?
If your site gains a link that you have paid for to be inserted through link-building strategies such as guest posts and so on, the link is considered artificial.
Their main goal, therefore, is to manipulate search engines into ranking a page in the search results, which, in most cases, has nothing to do with the relevance or quality of the content they're referring to.
Since Google uses backlinks as a ranking factor, many SEOs and bloggers started using βbackdoorβ means to gain links to their sites, which is unethical.
Why? Google looks at links as a strong signal of authority, relevance, and trust.
However, because any little manipulation of the links can affect the search results, they have invested heavily in monitoring all links on the web.
Thatβs why the Penguin Update of 2012 by Google was primarily launched to fish out and penalize the pages that use link-building strategies to earn inorganic links.
You can tell the links are unnatural if:
- They can be tracked
- They can sometimes be found within sponsored content.
- Theyβre obtained from sites that use monetization scripts
Therefore, itβs safe to say that if you want to get more organic traffic to your site and reduce potential penalty risks from Google, you need to get natural quality good links.
What are Good Links?
The Google algorithm is only getting better with timeβif not brutal. It may take a bit of time, but eventually, your page will be replaced in the natural search results when they realize your site is manipulating links for ranking.
Knowing the difference between when is good link and not can give you a leg up on the competition and ranking as the systems get better.
Here are some of the things that make good links stand out:
#1. A good link is harder to get, which means it will have more value.
#2. They need to come from pages that are relevant to the topic on your site.
#3. They should come from sites that are trustworthy and not spammy.
#4. They should flow naturally within the content.
#5. Links from sites that have high domain authority.
#6. They should follow Googleβs guidelines.
Again, letβs be upfront. Itβs not just about having good links, but high-quality links. Whatβs the difference?
In the past, SEOs could just collect a bunch of links and gain a ranking advantage and traffic, for that matter.
Today? Things have changed; Googleβs crawling bots are looking at the quality of the backlinks rather than their quantity.
Letβs discuss this in the next section.
What Makes Quality Links?
You can determine the quality of the links you have by looking at the website they were obtained from. The higher the domain authority, the higher the quality.
If you want to know what makes a natural quality link, here are some of the parameters we normally use:
#1. The site is niche with a regularly updated section about the topic.
#2. There are no outbound links to adult, illegal, payday, or scam sites.
#3. You wonβt be able to see that they allow sponsored content.
#4. Media kits and publicly viewable advertising sections do not have a price for or mention of text links or backlinks.
#5. Finding them in the Google news feed is a good sign that they are trustworthy or of high quality in Googleβs eyes.
#6. The links come from the body copy. That has to be earned, unlike blog comments, forum mentions, press releases, and other areas where anyone can easily build or buy links.
Up to that point, weβve looked at what good and high-quality links are. In the next section, weβll look at some of the profile link building strategies we use and how to get natural backlinks.
How do I get natural links?
So, how do you go about natural link building, and how do you create a nature link?
If you want natural links, you need to be valuable to other websiteβs visitors. That goes all the way to the content that you publish; if your content is of low quality, all you can expect is poor to zero links.
So, before you push live any kind of content you have, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who have I empowered, made feel important, or had an emotional reaction to?
- Did I provide a solution to a common or unique problem?
- How have I enabled people to easily share and link to this content?
- Where have I advertised it so that I can keep it in front of people who can give me quality backlinks and references?
- What is unique, special, or different about how Iβm presenting this content?
- Which ways have I better explained, detailed, or given examples of something complex, funny, or useful?
That said, Google is looking for links that are editorial, make contextual sense, and add value to the users (built through natural link building services) before they can link back to you.
Here is a guide that you can use to obtain natural links for your site:
1. Offer Value Instead of Asking for Links: There is a natural tendency among human beings to say, βIf you scratch my back, I will scratch your back.β Offer value to your readers by becoming a thought leader, and they will link back to you.
2. Make Your Content Targeted and Purposeful: Before you hit the publish button (or before you write on any topic), ask first if the content will be helpful to your audience.
Consider developing newsworthy research on the burning topic that people are actively searching for. Otherwise, if you write content that no one wants to read, itβs as good as dead.
3. Build Something Better: This strategy is known as the Skyscraper technique, which suggests finding a popular post and building something even better.
For example, if everybody else in your industry is offering β10 Tips to Managing Your SEO Campaign,β you should consider creating β20+ Tips for Managing Your SEO Campaign with the Legiit GMSD Dashboard.β
4. Entice Influencers With Ego Bait: This strategy suggests that you reach out to influencers for expert opinions to get material for content while they get an opportunity to increase their own visibility.
5. Search Q&A Websites for Potential Topics: If you want to deliver something extraordinary, try finding the emerging issue first on sites such as Quora and Reddit.
6. Diversify Your Content Types: Do not stick to only one form of content but instead provide several link options by creating as many content forms as possible.
For example, you can repurpose your blog posts into infographics and lead magnets.
7. Ask Others To Share: Finally, if what you have on your site is good, consider asking your friends, family, and colleagues to share it with their networks. It may end up in the hands of people who need it, rather than spamming on social media.
Final Thoughts
Letβs wrap it up with some link building stats. The number 1 ranking page on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than pages ranking in positions 2-10.
So, that means you need to be building links to your site consistently. However, Google wants links that are not manipulative in nature. If you have to get a link to your site, let it be something you deserve rather than playing games around.
Again, when someone mentions natural links, itβs all about quality. Quality links are good for your visitors and can protect you against any potential penalties should Google discover manipulated links in your industry.
Do yourself a favor and start hunting for quality natural links (using the strategies that we have highlighted above) or organic link building.
Weβre not disputing the fact that you can use unnatural links and go scot-free, but weβre saying that strategy is short-lived.
All the best.